Streatham in south London is a London neighbourhood with more than 50,000 residents.
But Axegrinder’s sources fear it is set to become yet another desert for professionally-produced local news.
This week Newsquest closed the print edition of the Streatham Guardian telling readers: “Now is your chance to become a citizen journalist”. It says that although the paper’s website was “set up by us, it belongs to you”.
No word in the piece about whether professional journalists will still be contributing to the site as well.
Meanwhile, my Streatham source tells me that Streatham’s only other paper – the new-look Tindle-owned Streatham and South London Press – recently carried only two non-sport Streatham stories.
PCC chairman Lord Hunt ventured into questionable territory in his keynote speech at the Society of Editors conference in Belfast last week.
Saying he was unhappy that people were describing his plan for a beefed up PCC as the Hunt/Black plan he said: “At least no one puts it the other way around.” There was little laughter.
Weirdest press release of the week comes in from Illicitencounters.com – the UK’s leading extra-marital affairs dating agency.
Apparently a survey of its members has revealed that the Daily Mail is their newspaper of choice.
They say: “It appears that women are not just content with reading about the tawdry affairs of celebrities and politicians, but are in fact actively seeking out one of their own.”
Second weirdest (and certainly crappest) press release prize goes to the Azelea group.
“An overwhelming number of British club golfers believe their sport doesn’t receive the coverage it deserves from national newspapers, according to a poll taken by HowDidiDo, Europe’s largest golfing community.
“A staggering 98 per cent of respondents to the poll on the HowDidiDo website voiced their displeasure and felt golf was not a priority for the national sporting press. Football dominates the thoughts of those on national sports desks, according to 97 per cent of club golfers.”
Mmm, right. No doubt their next press release will tell us that a staggering 98 per cent of bears are said to shit in the woods.
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